Marion Marlowe's Noble Work, or, The Tragedy at the Hospital — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

20 Suddenly there was a cry from the doctor - and a guard came running toward him. Dr. Brookes pointed with one hand toward a closed cell just above them, and with the other tried desperately to push Marion be- hind him. But he was a second too late, for Marion’s glance had followed his own, and for the next few minutes both stood speechless with horror. A man whose face was so familiar to Marion that her heart almost stopped beat- ing when she recognized it, was hanging by the neck to the door of his cell. In the mo- mentary excitement of the meal hour he had seized his opportunity, and when the guard at last cut him loose he was too far gone to be resuscitated. “Who is he?” asked Dr. Brookes, as they brought him down. Almost automatically the guard muttered the dead man’s number, but with ashen lips Marion gave the information. “His name is Lawson,” she said, in a whisper; “and he is the villain who boarded at my father’s home one summer. He was a hypnotist by profession, and he abducted my sister Dollie! He was sentenced to Sing Sing, so I had no idea that I would see him here,”’ The guard explained that he had been transferred to the Island by special order, only a few days previously. Reginald Brookes bit his lips in a burst of anger. “Forgive me,” he said, humbly; “I had no idea you bore such sorrow, Thank Heaven he has paid the penalty and yes— I am glad that you saw it.” too,” said Marion, who was “Tf it had to be—I am glad “I emi, deathly pale. that I saw it.” CHAPTER X. A CONVICTS CONFIDENCE, That very afternoon Dr. Brookes got a let- ter from Dr. Greenway. It was the first time he had heard from him since he loaned him the five thousand dollars. “Poor chap! Lle little what a shock I had,” he thought, “when for a mo- knows MY QUEEN. / ment I thought I had discovered his are heart in that drunken woman!” | He tore open the letter and read it hastily. It was very brief and only took a minute. “I am nicely settled,” wrote Greenaway, “and would be perfectly happy, but my sweetheart has thrown me over—jilted me— to be honest. Of course you will think that if I can talk of it I do not suffer, but at just this minute I must talk or die, and you, doc, are my friend, the only one I have in crea- tion. Yes, May has left me and gone, I don’t know where, but to be honest again, I think it is to the devil! She was always gay, but I trusted her, doc, even while she was abroad for three months. [I did not doubt her, but now there is no use denying it any longer, she is a bad, dissolute woman— and yet I love her!” There was a little more to the doctor's strange letter, but it was the postscript that Dr. Brookes remembered longest and won- dered most over. “T haven’t forgotten the name of your lit- tle nurse-friend, yet, doc,” it said, “for I have a curious presentiment, in some way, that some sorrow will come to me through Miss Marion Marlowe!” ‘As queer as ever—dqueerer, perhaps,” muttered Dr. Brookes as he finished the letter. Then as he went about his work in the meagerly furnished wards he found himself wondering if Greenaway was going crazy. “What a fool to throw himself away on a woman like that!’ he said aloud. The next instant he noticed with embarrassment that “Big Belle” had heard him. “By Jove!” thought the doctor, suddenly, “T am going to talk to this woman. Prison rules be hanged! She is a human being, and if any one knows the world this woman knows it.” He turned toward her instantly—there was no one within hearing. “Belle,” he said, quietly, “tell me some- thing of your life. [ want to know your mo- . . . ? tive for being dishonest. The woman stared at him a moment, and then smiled broadly. There was a vestige of her old shrewdness in the way she answered him. Gomicboo S com Te